Wine Adventures with the 2 Dollar Wine Connoisseurs: Up Lounge ---Wine Down

To celebrate our anniversary this year we went to the Up Lounge.  It is a part of the Sky Room in downtown Long Beach.  The Up Lounge definitely didn’t live up to our expectations.   We had wanted to go here for several years, so when our anniversary came around we decided to meet a couple of friends that were also celebrating their anniversary .  The entrance to the Sky Room is on the side of the Breakers building which is basically an old folk’s home.   Everything about the building said old (1930’s old) .   The ground floor entrance lead  down a haunted hallway past old photos and memorabilia of the early days of Long Beach.   

 The elevator to go up to the Sky Room looked like it was straight out of the Tower of Terror ride at Disney’s California Adventure.   The Sky Room itself looked nice  (though our friends that actually ate there said the food wasn’t as good as they had hoped for the price).   The Up Lounge was up some narrow old staircase that seemed straight out of an Alfred Hitchcock movie (Vertigo anyone?)

 I can’t even imagine how drunken people make their way safely back down after a couple of cocktails.  The Up Lounge  nothing like what we expected.  We thought it was going to be this fancy rooftop are overlooking the harbor.  We choose this place based on the website because of the food menu that featured Flat breads and cheese platters.  When we asked for the menu once up there the online menu didn’t really exist.   That menu is actually for the Wine down Lounge at the bottom of the building and if you wanted wine at the UP Lounge you needed to go back down the dangerous stairs and get it from the Sky room.   Even though it had a view of the ocean, it was cold and had no wine or food as advertised.  So we just meet up with our friends and headed down to the bottom floor via the Haunted Elevator.  The Elevator emptied  out  into the old 1930’s lobby of the Retirement home.  There was a cool old amusement park model that we wanted to check out ---but we were chased away quickly by angry nurses.   So we made our way to the  The Wine Down Lounge  which was completely empty when we entered at 8:30pm on a Friday night.   We ordered some wine and hung out with our friends and ordered a 5 cheese plate which was actually really good salvaging the evening.  The bartender there actually was someone who used to take my dad's backpacking classes at Long Beach City College and so we hung out and listened to some of his stories.    I'd recommend the Wine Down Lounge (although it was so empty) because the cheese platter was so good.   The Up Lounge.......NOT SO MUCH>